“Eh, Mistress Joyce,” cries old Mistress Rigg, “but sure you should never dare to touch a ghost?”
“There be not many things, save sin, Mistress Rigg, that I should not dare to do an’ it liked me. I have run after a thief with a poker: ay, and I have handled a Popish catchpoll, in Queen Mary’s days, that he never came near my house no more. And wherefore, I pray you tell me, should I be more feared of a spirit without a body than of a spirit within the body?—Austin, if thou meet the ghost again, prithee bid her come up to Selwick Hall and ask for Joyce Morrell, for I would give forty shillings to have a good talk with her. Only think, how much a ghost could tell a body!”
“Lack-a-day, Mistress Joyce, I’ll neither make nor meddle with her!” cries Austin.
“Poor weak soul!” saith Aunt Joyce. Whereat many laughed.
So, after a while, sat we down to rear-supper; and at after that, gathered in small groups, twos and threes and the like, and talked: and I with Isabel Meade, and Temperance Murthwaite, and Austin Park, had some rare merriment touching divers matters. When all at once I heard Aunt Joyce say—
“Well, but what ill were there in asking questions of spirits, if they might visit the earth?”
“The ill for which Adam was turned forth of Eden,” saith Father: “disobedience to a plain command of God. Look in the xviii chapter of Deuteronomy, and you shall see necromancy forbidden by name. That is, communication with such as be dead.”
“But that were for religion, Sir Aubrey,” saith Master Coward. “This, look you, were but matter of curiousness.”
“That is to say, it was Eva’s sin rather than Adam’s,” Father makes answer. “Surely, that which is forbid as solemn matter of religion, should be rather forbid as mere matter of curiousness.”
“But was that aught more than a ceremonial law of the Jews, no longer binding upon Christians?” saith Sir Robert.